6 comments

Thanks, Jolene. I took a life drawing class a few years back. The instructor was educated in the PRC. He said that about the only way to develop the internal logic of a piece of figurative art is to produce multiple drawings or paintings daily for awhile, then it’ll click. Part of the time he was a student, they were required to paint four oil studies daily.
One a day is the best I can manage, and sometimes not even that.

Yeah, it’s one of those skills that’s as much about perception and motor memory as deliberate action – practice is about getting the skills engrained sufficiently that you don’t have to obsessively think about what you’re doing. When I’m in practice, my sketches are accurate, easy, quick – when I’m not, they stink.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, which I have not read but have read about, he talks about the idea that acquiring a high-level of expertise requires 10,000 hours of practice–of whatever sort. I’m not sure what his evidence is, but that estimate comports w/ what I’ve heard from cognitive psychologists re 10 years of investment in a field being the foundation of expertise.

That sounds about right. I used to be able to partially mimic a level of deep focus by having a couple of glasses of wine. I got tired of getting sloshed at the easel, though, and the line between modest inspiration and hamfisted inebriation is just too damn fine.